TerraDrive Universe:Categorization
For detailed technical information on how to use categories, see ' '. For everything you ever wanted to know about categories, see TDU:Categorization FAQ. When to use categories Categories (along with other features like cross-references, lists, and infoboxes) help users find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called. Every page in the article namespace should belong to at least one category. Categories should be major topics that are likely to be useful to someone reading the article. :Article: Arkhaun :Useful category: Category:Planets :Not useful: Category:Planets whose name starts with A Questions to ask to determine whether it is appropriate to add an article to a category: *If the category does not already exist, is it possible to write a few paragraphs or more on the subject of the category, explaining it? *If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why the article was put in the category? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article? *Does the category fit into the overall category system? Categories that don't fit are often deleted. If the answer to any of these questions is no, then the category is probably inappropriate. Note that it is always appropriate to add articles to categories that fit into well established taxonomies. Guidelines Some general guidelines #Categories are mainly used to browse through similar articles. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles. #An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used as categories become less effective the more there are on any given article. #Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory. For example Golden Gate Bridge is in Category:Suspension bridges, so it should not also be in Category:Bridges. However there are occasions when this guideline can and should be ignored. For example, Robert Duvall is in Category:Film actors as well as its subcategory Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners. See #5 for another exception. For more about this see Wikipedia:Categorization and subcategories #Check to see where siblings of the article reside. If there are few if any articles in a category, the article probably belongs in one of the subcategories. #Articles should be placed in categories with the same name. However, the article and the category do not have to be categorized the same way. The article can also be placed in categories populated with similar articles. The category can be put into categories populated with similar subcategories. For an example of this see George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush. #There are often occasions when articles might ideally be moved from a category to two or more of its subcategories, but not all of the subcategories exist. In such cases consider creating the additional subcategories, but if you decide not to do so, leave the articles in the parent category for the time being. #Bend the rules above when it makes sense, but only if no other solution can be found. #Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category. A list might be a better option. #An article should normally possess all the referenced information necessary to demonstrate that it belongs in each of its categories. Avoid including categories in an article if the article itself doesn't adequately show it belongs there. For example, avoid placing a category for a profession or organization members or award unless the article provides some verification that the placement is accurate. #If you don't know where to put an article, don't worry about it. Instead of adding a category, use the tag to bring attention to the article. Editors who love to categorize articles will find a good home for your article. Categories do not form a tree Each TerraDrive Universe article can appear in more than one category, and each category can appear in more than one parent category. Multiple categorization schemes co-exist simultaneously. In other words, categories do not form a strict hierarchy or tree structure. Nevertheless, parts of the category graph will be tree-like, and it may be convenient to think of parts of the category graph as being like multiple overlapping trees. When applying the guidelines above, consider each tree to be independent of the overlapping trees. A person browsing through a hierarchy should find every article that belongs in that hierarchy. This can lead to a good deal of debate as to what the hierarchies actually are. To clarify the structure of the hierarchy and help people browse through it, you can add a classification to each category. . Loops should usually be avoided Although the MediaWiki software does not prevent loops, these usually should be avoided. Loops can be confusing to some readers, they can challenge some automated searching processes and they can grow quite large. For example, on Wikipedia in January 2006 a 22-member category cycle was discovered and eliminated. One type of cycle involves making two categories subcategories of each other. Loops such as these can be avoided by linking the categories manually to each other by adding "See also: Category:Whatever" to each category page. How to categorize an article Categorizing an article is simply performed by editing it to include one or more category declarations. For instance, to add Sol article to the "Planetary systems" category, you would edit the article and enter Category:Fluffy creatures at the bottom. The appeal of categories is that unlike lists, they update themselves automatically, and you don't have to edit the category to add an article to it. However, categories are not a substitute for lists, and you will find that many articles belong to both lists and categories. When adding an article to a category, or creating categories, one should be careful to use the correct categories and subcategories. Horizontal categorization, directly below, refers to placing an article in the correct category while vertical categorization refers to placing an article in the correct sub''category. When assigning an article into categories, try to be thorough in a "horizontal" sense. The topic may be associated with a location, a historical event, a species, a group or faction, and/or a special interest topic. You might need to poke around the category hierarchy a bit to find the right place. Try searching for articles similar to the article you are categorizing to get ideas or to find the most appropriate place. How to create categories Creating a category is as simple as adding a link to a category that doesn't yet exist. For instance, to create the "fluffy creatures" category, you would edit an article and enter Category:Fluffy creatures the same way as adding it to any other category. The Category:Fluffy creatures will automatically be created when the edit is saved. Category naming Categories follow the same general naming conventions as articles, for example do not capitalize regular nouns. Look before you leap Before creating a category, look to see if one already exists. The best way to do this is to first add the category to your article but preview before saving. When previewing a page, scroll right to to the very bottom of the browser window to see the categories. If the category appears in blue, the category already exists. If it is in red, then you will be creating a new category. Check the capitalization of the category name. For any red categories, you should look for categories with similar names before creating a new category. One way to do this is to think of the parent category for the new category. Search for it and then look at the subcategories in the parent. You may find that a category already exists that is similar to the one you are thinking about creating. Before creating a new category, familiarize yourself with all the guidelines on this page, and related pages. P You may see some inconsistencies when first creating the category: it may alternate between appearing empty and appearing with your first additions. It will probably correct itself in a few minutes. Note that, although "uncreated" categories ''will correctly list articles that have been assigned to them, the category page itself does not exist until it is manually created. The easiest way to create the category page is to follow the red category link from your article and create a new category page with a parent category and a category description as explained in the next section. How to create subcategories Subcategories may be created by putting [[Category:parent_category_name]] onto the page that you would like to make into a subcategory. This may seem counterintuitive, because you edit the subcategory page rather than the parent category page. Let's say that you wanted to make the category called White Dwarfs into a subcategory of the category called Stars. : Step 1 - Go to the page called Category:White Dwarfs, and click edit this page. : Step 2 - Place the text Category:Stars within the body of the Category:White Dwarfs article, and save. : Finished! White Dwarfs is now a subcategory of Stars, and Category:White Dwarfs will be visible on Category:Stars. How to delete a category On the talk page, give your rationale for why the category should be deleted, and then contact a moderator. How to rename a category On the talk page, give your rationale for why the category should be renamed, and then contact a moderator. Organizing categories Large categories When there are more than 200 entries in a category, only 200 are displayed on the screen and users have to click through multiple screens to see all the entries. To make it easy to navigate, add a TOC (table of contents). TOCs are added by typing: : - which adds a complete TOC (Top, 0 - 9, A-Z) : - which adds a TOC without numbers. This is for categories with members that only start with letters. Another possibility is dividing the category into several subcategories. Note that there is no technical consideration, policy or guideline requiring that large categories must be divided into smaller subcategories. When creating subcategories, group similar articles together in a meaningful and useful way that will make it easy for readers to navigate later. Remember that several subcategorization schemes can coexist (for example, if Category:Software gets too big, you don't have to choose between subdividing it by function or subdividing it by platform, you can simultaneously subdivide it in both ways). Grouping categories A set of related categories often forms a hierarchy or a nexus. This can take several different forms, all of which are welcome and encouraged: * A taxonomic grouping. For example, Category:South Asian countries is part of a geographical hierarchy. Category:Academic disciplines catalogs divisions between fields of study. * A functional grouping. Examples: Category:Ancient Rome, Category:World War II, and Category:Commercial item transport and distribution. These bring together articles and subcategories from different fields or taxonomies (history, war, culture, people, companies, industries, technologies) that have an interesting common thread. * Hybrid forms. For example, Category:Art is both part of the taxonomy of Category:Academia and a cross-reference point for lots of things that have little in common except that they have something to do with art. * Offshoot forms. For example, Category:Film stubs contains subcategories of Category:Comedy film stubs for comedy films, and Category:Drama film stubs for drama films. Other requirements TDUnamespace Categories relating to the TDU namespace should be added only to the talk page of articles. Redirected categories Although it is possible to attempt to redirect categories by adding a line such as #REDIRECT Category:Automotive technologies to a category, it is not generally recommended because of limitations in the mediawiki software. Categories "redirected" in this way do not prevent the addition of articles to the redirected category. Articles added to the "redirected" category do not show up as in the target category. Until these issues are addressed (in future versions of the software), #REDIRECT should not be added to category pages. "Soft" redirects for categories can be created using . Current projects See: TDU:Categorization projects (current) See also ;Browsing categories *Wikipedia:Browse - A large navigation page that includes links to high-level categories * Category Tree browser * - Lists all existing categories alphabetically. *Category:Categories - List of top-level categories. Requires this category be defined on the top of a tree. ;Maintenance *Wikipedia:Categories for discussion * * * * * *